15 excellent Greenwich GoodGymmers met on a VERY chilly night, braving the cold to help Made in Greenwich.

We heard about some upcoming GoodGym events, including:

• A community mission at the Woolwich Winter Warmer Surplus Feast.

• The GoodGym London Christmas party.

After a much-needed warm-up, we split into two groups to distribute flyers, one group going east from our meeting point and the other group going west.

In great GoodGym style and efficiency, we gave out all of the flyers we'd been asked to, along with admiring Christmassy-decorated houses, avoiding barking dogs through letterboxes and discovering that it's tricky to take good photos in the dark. In no time were ready to head back to base, the eastern group taking a scenic route along the river.

Once back, we did a fitness session based on the classic rock, paper, scissors game then did some stretches before parting ways to thaw out.

Thank you for your very warm welcome GoodGym Greenwich - great work everybody.

30 GoodGym'ers ran 8km as they went back to school to lend a helping hand

With Ana away in France enjoying the faboulous French cuisine and drinks I was left in charge to lead her Wandsworth group on a slightly fresh but dry February evening. A big welcome to Augusta, Ellie, Georgia, Georgina, Megan, Rianne and Rob, who all joined us for either their first EVER GoodGym run or first GoodGym Wandsworth run - hope to see you all again very soon! Wow! So many new faces tonight amongst the wonderful Wandsworth regulars, thank you all for coming along.

With a large crowd gathered in the Battersea Arts Centre's Scratch Bar we all headed across to our regular 'Bees Knees' room where after opting against sitting in the tiny chair I ran through a quick intro and round-up of the week's news.

You snooze you news...

1. February Long Run - This Sunday, starting at 9.30am or 10.30am depending on the pace you would like to run from Brixton Station. For all the details and to sign up, click here.
2. Morden Hall Park - Trust10 Trail Run - Also on Sunday, meet at 8.30am near the White Bridge in Morden Hall Park. Sign up here. It is FREE - there are no admission charges at Morden Hall Park.
3. Community Missions - This Sunday we will be following-up our group run visit to complete the big painting challenge at the sea scouts HQ in Putney, sign up here. On Sat 9th March there is a sorting task at St Mungo's Reconnection Post in Hammersmith, sign up here. No DBS check is required for a community mission.
4. Mission Changes - Make sure you read this week's 'Goodweek' email about how they are changing and also check your settings to make sure you're ready for the call-up! If you'd like to get involved with missions you need to be DBS checked - please sign up for a doc check and bring along your documents for checking.

School runnings

With a short pulse raising warm-up and the name and number count completed we headed off on our 4km run down to our task tonight at Riversdale Primary School. Following a couple of brief pauses to regroup, where of course the time was filled with a favourite exercise, the wall sit, along with some squat knee taps and some single-leg exercises to work on the ABCs - Agility, Balance and Coordination - aimed to strengthen the muscles and improve running form.

It wasn’t long before we arrived at Riversdale Primary School where we were warmly greeted at the school gate by the PE teacher, Claire. Claire led us into the school and briefly explained the age range of the school and some of the activities that the school children currently get involved with, as well as the upcoming Daily Mile that we were going to be helping to paint out - there was even a small swimming pool for the children to use, what a fab school!

Tonight we had four tasks that we were going to be lending a hand with so the group split into four even groups - each with a task force member in charge:

1. Help paint the daily mile track - Team Sarah
2. Cut back the hedges - Team Morag
3. Cut back the scrubs and tidy the flower bed - Team Sophie
4. Cut a bush into a tunnel - Team Helen

No beating around the bush

The teams quickly and efficiently got to work on their task and it wasn't long before lots of bags were filled with garden waste. Jo and Paul of Team Morag expertly solved a small lead challenge with a mixture of height and grace to allow Lewis to display his superb hedge trimming skills, while Team Helen got fully stuck in, quite literally to tame the wild bush to form a perfectly bush shaped tunnel for the children to run through.

A toy animal parade?!...be parade, be very parade!

Team Sophie got their hands stuck into the beds and removed the weeds at a weedy impressive pace until their was just soil left ready for some fresh spring bulbs, and of course the toy animal parade...

Not for the paint hearted

Team Sarah encountered a few minor mechanical machine issues which were solved by Mike, Claire's partner. With the machine working like a dream the team worked together with some on head torch duty and some on upcoming obstacle duty to mark out the daily mile track around the playground. With the finishing touches of green paint applied all that was now needed was for the painted mile track to be measured out so that Claire knew how many laps the children needed to do to complete their daily mile. Paul kindly stepped up and set his Strava and GPS watch up as he headed off on the run around the playground. The final distance measured was 130m, so the children will be running 13 laps to complete their daily mile, hopefully kick starting their #runlove, and who knows, maybe even one day in the future they'll join us on a GoodGym group run, or on a coach run...

Back to square run

With all the tasks completed and the team photo captured in front of the school entrance we headed off on the 4km run back to base in three smaller and different paced groups. In a repeat of the run down it seemed that all the traffic lights were against us, but the kilometres flew by and it wasn't long before we were all regrouped at base having a quick cool down and stretch. Cool down and stretches complete the class were dismissed to enjoy the monthly social in the Scratch Bar!

Thank you for all your hard work at the task tonight, hope you all enjoyed it. Next week the lovely Ana is back and we're heading to the Salvation Army HQ in Balham for a massive sorting task, the run will be a shorter one at 5km in total. Sign up for next week's run here. Hope you all have a fab week, see you next week on the 'runners side'!

Thank you very to the Task Force for all their help and the extra photos, and to Helen for backmarking!

With only four more groups runs to Christmas (well, three now!) we gathered last night to do as much good as we could possibly manage in the few weeks that are left. Undaunted by the old there were 22 of us, thermalled up and headtorches at the ready!

News roundup

Hello and welcome to all the runners coming to Wandsworth from other GG areas tonight. Lovely to have you join us!

Don't forget the Christmas party this Saturday- we have discussed our idea for the theme and the following link courtesy of Paul might help! Sign up and details here

We've been approached by FareShare, and amazing food charity, to participate in a massive food collection mission. It's soon to be listed on the website, so keep an eye out, but you can find out more here

Icy you baby, nailing that task

After a warm up (much needed) where we got our hearts pumping, we went round the group and found out the name of our first pet. There were Not one but two Goldys, along with several other very creative names, and a few non-pet owners.

Our task tonight was at the Kambala estate in Battersea, where we had been a few weeks earlier to start planting loads of bulbs in the raised beds there ready for Spring. The volunteers there have founded an organisation called Kambala Cares, which aims to bring residents together and to make the estate a lovely place to live. They have recently got funding for the project, but can't do such a massive job alone and so asked us along to lend a hand!

After a nice steady run down the hill we arrived to find Donna waiting for us with a load of tools and even more bulbs. Taking on one bed per group we got stuck straight in. It was hard going, and a great upper body work out, but half an hour later the job was pretty much done with just one guest appearance by the police -who took our photo! So it was off to the park to do some fitness.

Alpah-bet on Red

Tonight's fitness session focussed on our ABCs - agility, balance and coordination - which are vital for every runner and something we should be getting into our regular schedule. These drills strengthen muscles, help activate our fast-twitch muscles, work on our balance which ultimately improves our form and running economy. So over a given distance we worked on these crucial points with some grapevines, high skips, toe taps, reverse lunges and hopping. Passers by must have loved watching our sumo walks! To finish off the night we did our weekly minute's plank. You guys make it look easy!

After a steady run back to base, we had time for a stretch and a chat about next week's run. In a first for us we have an absolutely huge task on Clapham Common, shifting literally tonnes of compost ready for an incredible wildflower initiative. Sign up here for Monday fun and fitness.

GoodGym Greenwich smashed all previous records AGAIN last night with a whopping 33 of you running 8km to help the Scouts!

Last night was AAAAAAMAZING. The weather was slightly nicer than the complete washout we had last week, plus we had our biggest turnout EVER in Greenwich. It doesn't seem long ago that I had Taylor Swift in my head after 22 of you came... never did I think it would continue to grow this much... you guys are AWESOME!!!

We welcomed quite a few new faces to the group last night which is GREAT! Big thanks to recruiters Helen and Mridula for bringing their colleagues Maria & Irina. We were joined by two lovely gents Pulin & Nick. We also welcomed back Amy G after a little break and the wonderful Jack from Wandsworth who travelled quite a distance to get to Greenwich, but we're worth it aren't we Jack :) GIVE THEM ALL A CHEER!

HOLIYAY

The headcount used to take about 4 seconds, now it has become part of the ritual and takes a good 5 minutes to go around everyone! Favourite thing pivoted slightly last night to next holiday destination (inspired by the sunshine obviously) and it was great to hear where you're all off to. There were some pretty exotic ones, Swindon in particular, Alex and Steve please could you take me in your suitcase????

We dropped off our stuff, did a quick little warm up and split into 2 groups. Ben with the hat and Ben with the hat led a fast group who we lost sight of in about 40 seconds. The rest of us went at a slightly more leisurely pace :) We went through the park, everyone smashed it up the hill, had a 60 second breather and then pushed on!

20 minutes later we arrived at the scouts. Group 1 had already got themselves stuck in which was great to see! Scout Leader Alan explained the tasks that needed to be done. Arguably the most exciting of which was putting up the flagpole! This is something that has been on our list of things to do the last couple of times we've been here but we've never actually got round to doing it. But last night it was ON! George got started and he dug deep... literally.

"Tonight Matthew, I'm gonna be..."

With a little help from Christian, Elliot & Steve the cement was ready to go in, which created a lovely Stars In Their Eyes puff of smoke. Steve filled a bucket with "water" and chucked it down the hole and 5 minutes later it had set... JOB DONE.

In the meantime, other people were painting shutters, weeding in the jungle, filling fox holes (don't worry Nina there were no baby foxes in there), axing trees... literally everything was going down. 8pm approached and it was time to get going. We had a group photo by the wonderful flagpole which kind of looked a bit naked without a flag on it, just a white stick in the ground basically.... but it had to be done. We headed back the way we came, by this point the sun was a little less fierce which made for a lovely chilled run back. Since we were a bit later than planned and everyone had already run 8km, we skipped the fitness session and went straight into some nice stretching... you're welcome :) Trying to up my game after hearing other GG groups do yoga in their sessions haha!

Brownie points!

We went to stuff our faces with some amazing brownies baked by the equally amazing Mridula! Then we parted ways.... until next time gang!!!

For those of you who are new, here is the link to our ever growing Facebook group where people post about races and missions and well, anything really! Please join :)

Amazing job last night everyone! Thanks for getting stuck in as always, that would have taken Alan a whole day (if not more) to get everything done that you did in half an hour so really well done!!! And congratulations on, once again, being a part of our biggest ever run! YOU GUYS ROCK!! XXX